A True Story

My Next Great Adventure

Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone! I’m going to be really honest with you – Not only did I slack this week and not get a post written before today, but also I don’t really care for either team this year. Good luck to all of you Falcons and Patriots supporters, and please forgive me if this post is a little short.

The Email

This May, I’m going to Peru for 20 days. 20 whole days (!!!) and I couldn’t be more excited.

If you know me, making a crazy decision like traveling out of the country without my family or my friends is entirely unlike me. The last time I left the country alone, I was a sophomore in high school and spent the entirety of my two weeks in Japan in tears – homesick to an unreal degree. This time will be different. I’m older now. I want to see the world.

A Year in the Making

In the beginning of 2016, I thought I was in love with this really wonderful young man. Being young and naive, I thought I was really in love. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. But the romantic relationship ended in May of 2016. (I want to reiterate, he’s really an incredible guy. Absolutely fantastic. Kind, ambitious, funny. Even today, I’m lucky to call him a really great friend.)

When it ended, I was a little bit of a mess. I had just graduated from college, I didn’t have a job yet, I was living at home, I was now single and alone – basically feeling like some sort of post-grad failure. I felt like I was drowning. I had no direction, no purpose. I wanted to get out. I needed to get out.

Around that time, I joined a book exchange and received a book called The Sunflower by Richard Paul Evans. (It’s a great book about an unlikely pair who fall in love during a humanitarian mission to an orphanage in Peru.) While I’m not going on a humanitarian mission this time and I don’t plan on falling in love while on my adventure, this book was part of the reason I chose Peru as my first young adult trip. Climbing Machu Picchu has also been the top adventure on my bucket list for a long time. So, I found a job and saved up enough money to purchase my spot on a group tour to Peru.

It’s Go Time

I’m young. I’m ready to see the world. I’m ready to go, fly, and experience. To love and live.

With just under three months until I set off, I would be lying to you if I said I’m not nervous. I’m really nervous. Whatif something happens to my family or friends while I’m gone? What if something happens to me?

But Life isn’t any fun if you’re afraid of the What ifs. Don’t be afraid of the What ifs – embrace the Why nots. Maybe, a stranger in a book exchange will send you a book about an adventure in a foreign country. That book just might light a fire in you. It might inspire you to go, to take that trip, to go on that adventure that you’ve always been afraid of.

“Seek not your destiny, for it is seeking you.” (The Sunflower, Page 8)

My wish for you is that you are ready for your destiny when it finds you.

WAIT. WAIT – But Bex… What’s going to happen to the blog while you’re gone?

Not to worry, faithful reader! I’ll have things planned. Maybe, if you’re well behaved from now until then, I’ll even try to write and post FROM PERU. Wouldn’t that be incredible?